Comment 36186

By seancb (registered) - website | Posted December 10, 2009 at 10:34:42

I used to feel the same way. But I realized that the economies of scale of these centralized services mean that they can do a much better job of staying on top of intrusion security, data backup, feature upgrades, etc than I ever could in my entire lifetime. Not to mentio the spam fighting power is unmatchable on a small scale system. I also realized that the time I save could be better spent on other projects and problems that haven't already been solved.

And in the "new internet", these central socially connected services are what users crave, and because of this, their use encourages greater participation and penetration to a wider audience.

Is it laziness on my part? Not sure, but I know that I am now much more wary of falling into the not-invented-here trap: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Invented_Here)

I also used to be much more wary of client-side browser requirements, and while I still detest needless bloat (esp flash/java), I'm slowly coming to accept that most users have all the basic plugin requirements, and have in fact come to expect websites to make (good, efficient, not bloat-y) use of them.

If I were to expend development energy it would be focussed on mobile browsing. I'd leverage existing tools for the full-browser version and spend more time hand-building a very lightweight small-screen friendly version of RTH that allows mobile users to easily read and comment on stories.

But this is all just me :-)

The comment system here works great, and I'm sure it will only get better - it's all just food for thought!

I vote down for offensiveness and up for humour. I cast no votes based on my level of agreement.

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